Red Friday Field Notes – Mind Over the Material

In case this wasn’t on your radar, here’s one worth your attention.

Dr. Tara Swart isn’t just another talking head in the “self-help” aisle. She’s a neuroscientist and psychiatrist who has been on the sharp end of diagnosing, treating, and—yes—sectioning people when their minds slipped into dangerous territory. She’s seen the clinical side of what most folks would dismiss as “losing it.” And then, after the loss of her husband to leukemia, she started having experiences that looked an awful lot like the things she once labeled as symptoms.

Instead of ignoring them, she did what mission-focused minds do—she went deep. Her research, backed by decades of medical expertise, led her to believe the human brain isn’t just running on five senses. Current science suggests we have 34—and most of us aren’t even using the majority of them consciously.

She’s talking about grief unlocking capacities we don’t train for in modern life. Intuition. Pattern recognition. What she calls “the art of noticing.” Whether you think these moments are divine signals, subconscious genius, or coincidence, her position is simple:

1. The human mind is capable of far more than we think.

2. You can train these capacities—just like you train muscles.

3. They can be used to heal, connect, and find meaning when the mission changes.

This isn’t airy philosophy. She grounds it in neuroscience—things like the vagus nerve’s link between gut health and intuition, or how trauma can be locked in your body until released through movement, sound, or creativity.

For those of us in the Red Friday community—veterans, first responders, and our supporters—there’s a takeaway here: we’re built for heightened awareness, for scanning the field, for reading the unseen. That doesn’t have to end when the uniform comes off. Those senses can be re-tooled for purpose, resilience, and connection.

She’s not claiming to have all the answers, and she welcomes skepticism. But her story forces a question: what other tools are already in our rucksacks that we’ve never unpacked?

Key Red Friday mindset checks from her journey:

• Don’t ignore “coincidences”—log them, track patterns, see if they’re teaching you something.

• Build the senses that modern life dulls—through nature, creative work, and human connection.

• Use physical movement and breath work to clear mental choke points.

• Purpose after loss isn’t found—it’s trained for, the same way you trained for the mission.

Whether you buy her conclusions or not, she’s pushing the same operational truth we live by: stay open, stay curious, stay mission-ready.

— RedFridayFieldNotes

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